Stimulus funds included $22,000 router costing more than building it's inside.

West Virginia's Secretary of Commerce has refused to release the results of a taxpayer-funded report on the state's use of $126.3 million of federal stimulus funds for broadband investments. The existence of the report was revealed after a freedom-of-information request by the Charleston Gazette.

"The documents may be embarrassing to some people. Embarrassing because it was someone's opinion," West Virginia Secretary of Commerce Keith Burdette told the Gazette. "It was a specific document, citing specific companies, and making very specific suggestions to me."

Burdette argued that as an "internal memorandum," the document wasn't subject to the state's open records laws.

The state has been using stimulus money to subsidize the construction of fiber optic infrastructure around the state. The project includes stringing fiber to 630 new sites and installing 1100 new routers. "A recent West Virginia Legislative Audit report found that the state wasted at least $7.9 million—and up to $15 million—on the $24 million router purchase," the Gazette reports. "Auditors also are examining the use of the stimulus funds to build a $40 million fiber network."

Among the expenditures was a $22,600 router installed in a tiny public library.

Evidently, the report by the consulting firm ICF criticizes some of the contractors the state hired to perform the work. Burdette says the administration of Gov. Earl Tomblin does not come under criticism in the report.

House Minority Leader Tim Armstead, a Republican, has urged Burdette to release the consultant's findings. "When you have a project, and you're talking about millions of dollars in spending, and there are questions about whether those funds were efficiently spent, the public has a right to know about it," he told the Gazette. "It's insulting to tell the public they have to pay for something and they can't see it. "The public paid for that report."

Timothy B. Lee
Timothy covers tech policy for Ars, with a particular focus on patent and copyright law, privacy, free speech, and open government. His writing has appeared in Slate, Reason, Wired, and the New York Times. Emailtimothy.lee@arstechnica.com//Twitter@binarybits

56 Reader Comments

Embarrassment is not a valid reason to keep documents secret. Indeed, if there is something embarrassing about how government business was conducted, that is exactly what disclosure is for -- to keep the government accountable for their actions, most especially when something has been done incorrectly.

Keeping documents secret for this reason is an abuse of laws that provide secrecy when there is a legitimate need, and undermine the rationale for those laws.

"It's insulting to tell the public they have to pay for something and they can't see it. "The public paid for that report."

I think I like Tim Armstead. A politician who at least in this situation understands being responsible. Looks like he is not being listened to.

Politicians treating tax dollars like an unending fount of money will stop if we start forcing them to release every single expense and report. Freedom of information is super important to a democracy.

"The documents may be embarrassing to some people. Embarrassing because it was someone's opinion,"

Yeah right, more likely that people will demand that some heads start rolling if they see it. If a decision was made on (almost?) pure opinion instead of facts then the public has a right to know about it, regardless of how embarrassing it turns out to be after they see the results.

Nothing was ever done about this. Congress is more than happy to investigate stupid and meaningless shit like steroid use in Pro Ball but not the theft of billions in tax payer money and fraud telecom companies committed against the people.

"It's insulting to tell the public they have to pay for something and they can't see it. "The public paid for that report."

I think this report should be released, but I also don't agree that "public paid" = "public results" in every case. Certainly there are public studies, surveys, investigations where personal information and 'legitimate' secrets should be kept private even though the money comes from the public coffers. Possible example: Minnesota traffic cam data

Politicians treating tax dollars like an unending fount of money will stop if we start forcing them to release every single expense and report. Freedom of information is super important to a democracy.

Regardless of what information gets released, they certainly won't stop treating tax dollars as an unending fount, Republican and Democrat alike. And there is nothing you can do about it either, because you'll never get enough people together to change it. The system is far to entrenched and powerful for anything to change barring a full-scale revolution to tear it down to the foundations. Even *if* that happens, you can count on the same problems coming back because most people are greedy, selfish assholes that will find ways to screw any system put in place, no matter how ideal.

Now wait a minute, this is the first I've heard of a fiber optic network deployment. All the previous articles followed a pattern of, "Ha ha! Let's all laugh at silly WV for spending so much for a router in a tiny public library!"

What if these are completely related? Look at the Google Fiber deployment. They're using city-owned buildings to house a lot of the networking equipment. Is it possible that this expensive router is a)designed to aid in the deployment of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and that b) that tiny library/trailer is the only state building in the entire area? In that case, then this makes perfect sense.

I've been to WV. It's beautiful there. Jaw-droppingly so in some places. But as a member of the always-connected high-speed access generation, there is nothing that can entice me to live in an area with DSL, satellite, and dial-up as my only options. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and the state desperately wants more higher-income people living there. If their intent is to get fiber connected to every house like other utilities (power, telephone, water and sewer), then I say go for it.

Yes, the report should be disclosed in full, but only if it can be guaranteed that it will be taken in its full context. If I'm right, then these expenditures may very well be right on target. But there's the possibility, too, that they've just been duped. Either way, people do deserve to be told.

I can basically see how this happened though. Someone in purchasing that has minimal or no IT experience outsourced the entire project. Approached Cisco for the hardware (cause after all, no one is ever fired for using Cisco). Tells said Cisco rep he has X number of locations and they sell him X number of overpriced routers.

I mean we can conclude that there was:

A: Either no oversight or logical consultation from outside IT sources

or

B: Massive kick-backs from the sales people and contractors doing this project

Embarrassing = Someone may or would have gotten fired/have to pony up for their mistakes in this fiasco.

Funny how someone most likely will take a fall for this, someone way down the food chain who had the least amount of pull or impact on this entire debacle whereas those really in charge will walk away smooth and clean, and probably with a fatter wallet.

The report is embarrassing because it is someone's opinion? How is a critical analysis of spending an opinion? It's not like this report is saying that the author of the report heard on the playground that someone is mean. This report is the result of an taxpayer funded investigation into the gross misuse of tax dollars. While I suppose there might be a difference of opinion as to what the definition of "gross misuse" covers I think that consensus is in that wasting approximately $125 million is "gross misuse."

Now wait a minute, this is the first I've heard of a fiber optic network deployment. All the previous articles followed a pattern of, "Ha ha! Let's all laugh at silly WV for spending so much for a router in a tiny public library!"

What if these are completely related? Look at the Google Fiber deployment. They're using city-owned buildings to house a lot of the networking equipment. Is it possible that this expensive router is a)designed to aid in the deployment of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and that b) that tiny library/trailer is the only state building in the entire area? In that case, then this makes perfect sense.

I too was laughing, but put in the context of those other deployments that's a pretty compelling and reasonable argument.

Well, in this day and age, it's only a matter of time before Keith Burdette's personal information gets published instead.

Run for public office, expect your life to be open to the public.

Keith is kinda famous in WV. He's been in politics for pretty much his entire adult life. He was first elected to the state house when he was in his early 20's.

Stepping off to the side, with WV, it is a little difficult to figure out the level of corruption against the level of desperation. When I was growing up, WV was very proud of the fact that it was the first state to have all-digital switching in its phone networks. There was another wave where they made it a point to have computers in every classroom in the state. They really, really, buy big into computers and technology on the expectation of turning around its education system. The state government has bought into a technology first - and cutting technology first, at times - mindset to achieve its goals of pushing education. I suspect that they did not see much point in granularity of trying to tailor specific switches to specific locations. (They should have probably gone with a tiered approach, but that is not their pattern in previous waves of purchases either).

My point here.. while there is a lot of room for perceived corruption or bad decision making, it is well within their historical approach of buying technology and hoping to turn things around rather than addressing the real issues.

Now wait a minute, this is the first I've heard of a fiber optic network deployment. All the previous articles followed a pattern of, "Ha ha! Let's all laugh at silly WV for spending so much for a router in a tiny public library!"

What if these are completely related? Look at the Google Fiber deployment. They're using city-owned buildings to house a lot of the networking equipment. Is it possible that this expensive router is a)designed to aid in the deployment of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and that b) that tiny library/trailer is the only state building in the entire area? In that case, then this makes perfect sense.

I've been to WV. It's beautiful there. Jaw-droppingly so in some places. But as a member of the always-connected high-speed access generation, there is nothing that can entice me to live in an area with DSL, satellite, and dial-up as my only options. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and the state desperately wants more higher-income people living there. If their intent is to get fiber connected to every house like other utilities (power, telephone, water and sewer), then I say go for it.

Yes, the report should be disclosed in full, but only if it can be guaranteed that it will be taken in its full context. If I'm right, then these expenditures may very well be right on target. But there's the possibility, too, that they've just been duped. Either way, people do deserve to be told.

This fiber buildout has nothing to do with fiber-to-the-home. Only public anchor institutions. There are coils of fiber hanging from utility poles by public buildings all over the place. Trust me, I live in WVA.

The report is embarrassing because it is someone's opinion? How is a critical analysis of spending an opinion? It's not like this report is saying that the author of the report heard on the playground that someone is mean. This report is the result of an taxpayer funded investigation into the gross misuse of tax dollars. While I suppose there might be a difference of opinion as to what the definition of "gross misuse" covers I think that consensus is in that wasting approximately $125 million is "gross misuse."

Haven't you paid attention? Everything is just someone's opinion, and decisions strictly get made by who rallies more troops behind the truthiness of their opinion.

Yeah, I'm pretty disappointed by the current state of discussion in the US.

And some people STILL believe that our government has a revenue problem rather than a spending problem.

Short term it has both a spending and revenue problem, long term it has a spending problem. Like if someone has a credit card debt they can't afford, sometimes they'll take on a second job until it's paid off, the government could raise revenue to offset the debts and reduce interest payments, then put the money saved on reducing the interest payments into paying off the loan. Once things have improved they can phase out the revenue raising plans

Actually, this is exactly what was done to pay off the WW2 debts, and it worked pretty effectively

I love how the elite are always talking about how the information they have, and the decisions they make are so complex that the average public should not have access to them because they couldn't figure out the complex information anyway.

Then when the reports come out its written by retards in clown suits with giant red noses, in crayon, with coffee stains on it. That any Joe asshole can see is clearly void of complexity and in reality is so blatantly obviously shrouded in bullshit and lies that you now see the reason for "too complex for public consumption".

Nothing was ever done about this. Congress is more than happy to investigate stupid and meaningless shit like steroid use in Pro Ball but not the theft of billions in tax payer money and fraud telecom companies committed against the people.

Generally true. But I personally know that the money from the Telecom Act of 1996 was put to pretty good use at least in Lincoln county, MT. We have a telephone co-op (Interbel), not a regular company (we now have CenturyTel or something as a competitor in some places).

Lincoln county is a poor county in a poor state, but there is fiber in the ground and dslam network shacks all over the place. It took some years after it was put in before there was demand enough to light it up, but it is now. Still not the greatest or cheapest service, but a *lot* better than what we would have otherwise.

I believe that that happened in other parts of MT serviced by co-ops as well.

House Minority Leader Tim Armstead, a Republican, has urged Burdette to release the consultant's findings.

I appreciate this info, but, of course, notice that Burdette's party is not mentioned. While I recognize that both parties are complete ass-wipes for the most part, it seems the media go out of their way to shield those it favors.

House Minority Leader Tim Armstead, a Republican, has urged Burdette to release the consultant's findings.

I appreciate this info, but, of course, notice that Burdette's party is not mentioned. While I recognize that both parties are complete ass-wipes for the most part, it seems the media go out of their way to shield those it favors.

WV is, for all practical purposes, a single party state. Most of its people are registered Democrats, who vote a heavy Republican agenda.

House Minority Leader Tim Armstead, a Republican, has urged Burdette to release the consultant's findings.

I appreciate this info, but, of course, notice that Burdette's party is not mentioned. While I recognize that both parties are complete ass-wipes for the most part, it seems the media go out of their way to shield those it favors.

Burdette is not an elected official; the party affiliation of non-elected officials is usually not mentioned in news reports, if it's even known.

Now wait a minute, this is the first I've heard of a fiber optic network deployment. All the previous articles followed a pattern of, "Ha ha! Let's all laugh at silly WV for spending so much for a router in a tiny public library!"

What if these are completely related? Look at the Google Fiber deployment. They're using city-owned buildings to house a lot of the networking equipment. Is it possible that this expensive router is a)designed to aid in the deployment of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and that b) that tiny library/trailer is the only state building in the entire area? In that case, then this makes perfect sense.

I've been to WV. It's beautiful there. Jaw-droppingly so in some places. But as a member of the always-connected high-speed access generation, there is nothing that can entice me to live in an area with DSL, satellite, and dial-up as my only options. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and the state desperately wants more higher-income people living there. If their intent is to get fiber connected to every house like other utilities (power, telephone, water and sewer), then I say go for it.

Yes, the report should be disclosed in full, but only if it can be guaranteed that it will be taken in its full context. If I'm right, then these expenditures may very well be right on target. But there's the possibility, too, that they've just been duped. Either way, people do deserve to be told.

Same here. I never heard about fiber as part of this. If I was setting up a large fiber network, $22k routers wouldn't look so bad, even if they dead-end at a small location.

Now wait a minute, this is the first I've heard of a fiber optic network deployment. All the previous articles followed a pattern of, "Ha ha! Let's all laugh at silly WV for spending so much for a router in a tiny public library!"

What if these are completely related? Look at the Google Fiber deployment. They're using city-owned buildings to house a lot of the networking equipment. Is it possible that this expensive router is a)designed to aid in the deployment of Fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and that b) that tiny library/trailer is the only state building in the entire area? In that case, then this makes perfect sense.

I've been to WV. It's beautiful there. Jaw-droppingly so in some places. But as a member of the always-connected high-speed access generation, there is nothing that can entice me to live in an area with DSL, satellite, and dial-up as my only options. I'm sure I'm not the only one, and the state desperately wants more higher-income people living there. If their intent is to get fiber connected to every house like other utilities (power, telephone, water and sewer), then I say go for it.

Yes, the report should be disclosed in full, but only if it can be guaranteed that it will be taken in its full context. If I'm right, then these expenditures may very well be right on target. But there's the possibility, too, that they've just been duped. Either way, people do deserve to be told.

Same here. I never heard about fiber as part of this. If I was setting up a large fiber network, $22k routers wouldn't look so bad, even if they dead-end at a small location.

"not *as* bad"

Of course they needed to pull fiber, how else would they be able to fully utilize those routers.

From what I remember there was absolutely no indication that they would serve more than the "government buildings" at those locations so no matter how you see it pulling fiber and putting in a $22k router into a trailer that is open one day a week (afair) is an utter waste of tax payer money.

It is not uncommon for a municipality to employ an IT staff that is not experienced or well trained. Typically the municipality doesn't pay well consequently you get substandard personnel. You get what you pay for...

Well, in this day and age, it's only a matter of time before Keith Burdette's personal information gets published instead.

Run for public office, expect your life to be open to the public.

I wonder when the voters will stop voting people in who only care about getting re-elected and start voting in people who don't give a damn about elections and focus on fixing shit. Decades of this has given us the steamy pile we have today.

"It's insulting to tell the public they have to pay for something and they can't see it. "The public paid for that report."

I think this report should be released, but I also don't agree that "public paid" = "public results" in every case. Certainly there are public studies, surveys, investigations where personal information and 'legitimate' secrets should be kept private even though the money comes from the public coffers. Possible example: Minnesota traffic cam data

nonsense. if you have no reasonable expectation of privacy on a public road is fair reason for the cops to record it, its fair reason to make it open. and when people are outraged, then its fair reason to stop the practice.